The first thing to do is prepare your product images – you’ll need to make sure that they’re no larger than 800 x 600 pixels, though we’ve found that 600 x 600 pixels is optimum. You don’t need to worry about creating separate images for slideshows and thumbnails etc – the system will automatically scale the image you upload. Do make sure you don’t have any spaces or special characters, like umlauts, in the filename.

Once you’ve done this, head to the Content/Categories section of your shop’s back office and open file management. Create a new folder with a meaningful name – we’ll use ‘Import’ by way of example. Now upload the product images you’ve just prepared to this folder – you can upload multiple images at once by marking multiple files in the selection field.

Next, create the products in your shop – you can also use the Import/Export function to save time. Create a test product with all the necessary specifications, and then export the product data. You’ll receive a CSV file which can be used as a template for the remaining products. To create additional products, just fill out the CSV file.

There are two columns in the CSV file that you will need to use to assign the product images you just uploaded to the newly created products: “[ImageLarge]” and “[ImageSlideShowString]“. In the “[ImageLarge]” column, enter the path to the product image that will be used as the main image for the respective product. In our example, this would be: Import/ProductA_Image1.jpg.

In the “[ImageSlideShowString]” column, enter the file path to the images that will be used for the gallery in addition to the main image, separating the file paths using a semicolon. In our example, this would then be: Import/ProductA_Image2.jpg; Import/ProductA_Image3.jpg; Import/ProductA_Image4.jpg.

Once you’re done, save the CSV file and upload it back to your back office. The shop will now integrate the files from the ‘Import’ folder into the database and assign the product images accordingly. After it’s finished, you can delete the ‘Import’ folder in the file administration if you wish – files will no longer be needed.

The Daily eShop Forum is intended to create a space where people who have eShops can share their tips and tricks, ask questions and make suggestions.

Everyone at Daily is a forum member too, of course, and we’ll be checking in regularly, so if you need our advice or have a question or suggestion for us just log in (you’ll need to register as  a forum member first, though you can read previous discussions without logging in) and either post a new topic or join an existing conversation if it seems relevant.

Of course, a community really needs participation to make it work, so if you already have an eShop or you’re interested in setting up an online shop but would like a little more advice before you dive in, head on over to http://forum.daily.co.uk and join in! It might take a little while to get going, but we’re sure that our eShop customers will find it really useful to have a place to share their thoughts with each other and make suggestions to us. As a starter for ten, why not use the forum to make some suggestions for things you think we could do to help us support your online shop business?

First and foremost is just that – planning! Think about what you want to achieve, what your skills are and what your future plans may be. For example, are you hoping to need the option to expand in the future?

Are you comfortable building a website and installing and configuring eCommerce software such as OSCommerce yourself? If so, a web hosting package is likely to be the best choice for you – choose the highest spec package you can reasonably afford to give yourself plenty of room to grow in the future, but make sure that it includes a database as it’s likely that any shop software you use will require one.

If you’d prefer not to construct your shop yourself you have a couple of choices. You could hire a website designer – in which case, make sure you clearly scope out exactly what you want from your site, including the administrative back-end as well as the website your customers will see – you’ll need somewhere you can upload new products, manage inventory, manage customer databases, create invoices and so on. Or you could opt for an integrated shop design, admin and web hosting package like our eShop products if you’d prefer to keep costs low or stay on top of your site yourself but without having to delve into code.

Whichever method you choose, it’s crucial to keep your potential customers at the forefront of your mind. Choose a clean, clear design and make sure it’s really easy for people to navigate your site, find what you want, and pay for their items – the more complicated the process, the more potential customers you’ll lose along the way. You’ll need to develop a look and feel for your brand that you can use throughout your site for a consistent feel – think about what sort of style might fit your products, and keep it as clean and uncluttered as possible to really show your products off.

Think about how you’ll showcase your products – what sort of categories might people expect to find them under? Have you got good photos of them, including additional shots of any particularly unusual or interesting details? How will you describe them? With your images and copy you’re aiming to highlight their key features and benefits to customers as concisely and enticingly as possible – keep it short and sweet, use bullet points for feature lists, tell customers why they want it, and keep the format consistent from product to product so it’s easy for customers to compare items. Make sure you include crucial information like weight, measurements, number included, colour etc where appropriate.

While developing your web shop, you’ll also need to think about how to take payments. There’s a number of options, but one of the simplest and most recognisable is PayPal, which allows you to accept credit and debit cards, bank transfers and PayPal balance. Online consumers are used to paying by PayPal and they’ll handle all of the card processing for you, so it’s a great option – you can start taking payments online whilst still a fledgling business yet benefit from the customer confidence invoked by an established, trusted name. Our eShop packages can be integrated with PayPal easily.

For more detailed information about things to consider when setting up your own online shop, download this pdf Guide to eCommerce, written by PayPal in conjunction with Daily Internet.

Need more information?
We’ll be talking about starting to sell online in more detail in future articles, but we know that lots of our customers have questions about payment processing. So, if you have any questions about online payment processing, we’d be happy to put them to the PayPal team – just drop us a line and we’ll see if we can answer your questions in a future blog article.

Several times in conversation, we have heard of our eShop customers involving a web design company to get their shop off the ground by uploading their images and products and generally designing their sites.

What shocks us is when we hear how much our customers have been charged for this service – in some cases it’s been up to £1000 and then further fees of several hundred pounds to make any additional updates. Compare this with our Managed Setup service. We’ll charge just £35 per hour for getting your eShop off the ground, and as a guide we’ve found that many typical layouts and designs don’t take more than two or three hours maximum.

We all know that separate web design companies aren’t always cheap, however their fees are typically for building a totally bespoke website from scratch – customised to your specific needs. For an online shopping site needing shopping baskets, payment calculators, secure checkout facilities etc. it’s easy to understand why their fees can be high as there’s a lot of work involved. The beauty of eShop, though, is that you’re already half way there already due to the templated design and the backend features already included in the package.

My advice to anyone thinking of involving a third party web design company in designing their eShop is to give us a call or drop us an email first. A few minutes of your time could save you hundreds of pounds. It may be that we can show you how to achieve what you want yourself within the eShop system, but if not we’re confident that our custom design prices are highly competitive.

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Online shopping is big business, and the collaboration between Daily Internet and Protx offers customers an excellent, low risk way to build a business as an online trader taking secure transactions.

More about payment processing with Protx.

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The payment processing offer applies to any new eShop from Daily.co.uk and is valid until 31st January 2009.

Struggling to find time to build your online shop?

Don’t forget, we also have a Managed Set-up service for eShop. We’ll be happy to step in to help build your web shop if you’re finding you just don’t have the time you’d like to devote to building your online shopping website. Just contact the Helpdesk team and we’ll discuss your needs with you and provide a bespoke quote for the work.